


The Music That Connects Us

by eadreytheiptscray



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Inspired by Music, POV Chuck Hansen, POV Yancy Becket, Post-Knifehead (Pacific Rim), Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2019-11-02 02:09:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17879096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eadreytheiptscray/pseuds/eadreytheiptscray
Summary: "Listening to music together was maybe one of the best connections you can find outside the Drift,Raleigh thought." (Pacific Rim official movie novelization, pg. 197)—————Sometimes, song lyrics say more about co-pilot connections than anything else. These are just some of the songs that resonate with the heroes of the Kaiju War.Canon storylines. Headcanon song choices:-Yancy Becket: "My Blood," Twenty-One Pilots-Chuck Hansen: "Broken Crown," Mumford & Sons-Stacker Pentecost: "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark," Fall Out Boy





	1. My Blood, I'll Go With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yancy Becket always looked out for his little brother. In death it's no different.
> 
> —————
> 
>  **Song:** "My Blood" by Twenty-One Pilots

**_When everyone you thought you knew / Deserts your fight, I'll go with you_ **

Mom died when we were kids. Cancer. We never saw her without a halo of smoke around her head. The cigarettes killed her in the end.

Dad left. Then Jazmine. And it was just me and Raleigh against the world.

 

_**You're facing down a dark hall / I'll grab my light and go with you** _

We dropped out of school to join the Jaeger Academy. I was 20, Raleigh was 17. Didn't think much of it until we saw how many other cadet hopefuls showed up. Who were we, two nobodies from Anchorage? We'd never make the cut—or so we thought.

 

_**Surrounded and up against a wall / I'll shred 'em all and go with you** _

Training was hell. Combat simulations were worse. But we held our own. Despite all those sleepless nights and smoky bars and stupid fistfights. Caffeine replaced my red blood cells and bags sagged under my eyes, but at least Raleigh and I didn't wash out.

 

_**When choices end, you must defend / I'll grab my bat and go with you** _

Knifehead. Biggest Category III we'd ever faced. And our last.

We had our orders from the Marshal. Didn't mean we weren't going to save as many lives as we could out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

"The hull… it went through the hull!" I'll never forget the look on my brother's face. It was the 5-year-old shaking in his airplane seat, the 10-year-old falling through the ice, the 15-year-old watching a kaiju splinter the Golden Gate Bridge.

"Raleigh, listen to me" were the last words my brother heard from me. He didn't hear me say "you gotta keep going, you gotta finish this fight." I wasn't necessarily talking about Knifehead.

 

_**Stay with me, no, you don't need to run / Stay with me, my blood, you don't need to run** _

I couldn't stop Raleigh from leaving the Corps. Didn't mean I couldn't follow him to the Wall. For five years, four months. I watched him cope with whisky and women and without finding solace in either. And I followed him back to the Shatterdome when the Marshal came to take him home.

 

_**If there comes a day people posted up at the end of your driveway / They're calling for your head and they're calling for your name / I'll bomb down on them, I'm coming through** _

Raleigh, you know this guy's trying to rile you up. You don't have to keep avenging me. A million hits can't bring me back. Don't throw away your future by holding tight to the past.

 

_**If you find yourself in a lion's den / I'll jump right in and pull my pin / And go with you** _

No oxygen, no co-pilot, no time—Raleigh, what did you get yourself into?

I miss you, kid, but not so much that I want you here now. You're not dying in this jaeger, in a world that's not your own. You're going to live if I've got anything to say about it.


	2. I'll Never Wear Your Broken Crown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck Hansen was only 21 when he died in a jaeger at the bottom of the ocean. He was a hero, but he never really had a choice.
> 
> —————
> 
> **Song:** "Broken Crown" by Mumford & Sons

_**Touch my mouth and hold my tongue / I'll never be your chosen one** _

Most of my mates had a chance to get out of their father's shadow. Not me. I ended up with dead-weight dad as a co-pilot. And even if I had left the Jaeger Program, I couldn't shake him completely. What do you do when your old man's been inside your head?

At least I got my name in the history books. The youngest Ranger ever to enlist in the Jaeger Academy. And then one of the youngest to pilot a jaeger. Striker Eureka. Dad and I got ten kills under our belts before the Sydney 'Dome shut down, but it didn't take that long for me to become one of the best pilots in the PPDC.

So I should've seen it coming that I'd be the one to drop a nuke into the Breach.

 

_**I'll be home, safely tucked away / You can't tempt me if I don't see the day** _

Dad had a choice. He always had a choice. When that nuke hit Sydney, he'd left Mum to die. If the blast didn't kill her, the radiation poisoning did. Or maybe it had been Scissure. It doesn't matter. She suffered and died alone.

And it's all his fault.

 

_**The pull on my flesh is just too strong / It stifles the choice and the air in my lungs** _

Figures I'm the only chance we've got to deliver that bomb. But I'm stuck with two prison guards, the basketball triplets, Tokyo pop, a washout, and my co-pilot. There's no way I'm getting out of this alive.

Still, sacrificing myself to save the world? Wouldn't have it any other way.

 

_**I will not speak of your sin / There was a way out for him** _

Who knew breaking a collarbone would promote you to Marshal and out of a Conn-Pod?

 

_**But oh, my heart was flawed, I knew my weakness / So hold my hand, consign me not to darkness** _

There are worse ways to die. Gasping for air as your Conn-Pod fills with water. Wasting away from radiation poisoning. Sure, maybe I've always wanted to die in a blaze of glory. Standing tall in a jaeger, with shoulders back and eyes forward. Dying a hero.

At least it'll be quick.

 

_**So crawl on my belly till the sun goes down / I'll never wear your broken crown** _

My hand's on the switch. Just seconds from detonation. But all I'm thinking about is the day I followed dad and Uncle Scott to the PPDC. I spent half my life as a kid, then the other half in a cockpit.

Wish I'd had a choice.


	3. Gonna Need a Spark to Ignite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stacker Pentecost tasted vengeance at age 12 and got sent to military school for his efforts. But fixed points have to come from somewhere.
> 
> —————
> 
>  **Song:** "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark" by Fall Out Boy

_**Be careful making wishes in the dark / Can't be sure when they've hit their mark / And besides in the meantime I'm just dreaming of tearing you apart** _

Day laborer. Nightclub performer. Illegitimate son.

There wasn't much might behind the Pentecost name. Not in the minds of Tottenham, at least. By the time Stacker could start piecing syllables together, he'd figured out that no one thought much of his family.

Especially since they were tied loosely to organized crime.

Stacker learned to form fists before he could form sentences and hit bullies before the books. That came as no surprise to anyone who knew the Pentecost family well; Stacker was his father's son.

 

_**I'm in the details with the devil / So now the world can never get me on my level / I just got to get you out of the cage / I'm a young lover's rage, gonna need a spark to ignite** _

For a whole month when he was nine, Stacker remembers his mum coming home with her head bowed and shoulders slumped. Her eyes had lost their twinkle and voice had lost its warmth.

But one night, Viviane Pentecost threw open the door and stormed inside. Hot tears raced down her cheeks and fire blazed in her brown eyes. Stacker and Luna looked up from the TV just as their father burst out of kitchen.

The children were sent to bed; Stacker eavesdropped while Luna slept. Amid the fervent whispers, "serves you right if your children starve" was the only phrase that rang out. Once its meaning revealed itself, two years later, it became kindling.

 

_**My songs know what you did in the dark / So light em up up up, light em up up up / light em up up up, I'm on fire** _

Obadel Pentecost was strong in many ways, but he couldn't outmatch the nightclub owner's entourage. For the scratch he left on the owner's arm, he was repaid with ten stab wounds to his shoulders, stomach, and back.

At nine years old, Stacker saw his father's heart monitor flatline.

At ten years old, Stacker stopped being surprised by his mother's dull eyes and raspy voice.

At eleven years old, Stacker started earning bloody noses from the nightclub owner's entourage.

At twelve years old, Stacker Pentecost watched flames dance inside the nightclub.

And at thirteen years old, army barracks became his new home.

 

_**All the writers keep writing what they write / Somewhere another pretty vein just dies** _

Twenty-seven years, two children, and a war later, Marshal Stacker Pentecost stared down twenty-seven representatives, his back to his two closest advisors and a room full of dusty LOCCENT equipment.

Before him on screen, an American in a tailored suit, likely lounging in a cushy leather chair, imparted sage wisdom: "The jaegers aren't the most viable line of defense anymore."

"I am aware." The Marshal ignored the heat in his veins, decades old and intimately familiar. "Those are my Rangers that die every time a jaeger falls."

One last chance. One final assault was all he needed.

And yet...

"The coastal wall program is a promising option."

Maybe for politicians who cared more about their positions than the people they promised to protect. Stacker set his jaw as the TV screens blinked out one by one.

He had no matches, but burning bridges required nothing more than a few choice words: "We don't need them."

 

_**I've got the scars from tomorrow and I wish you could see / That you're the antidote to everything except for me** _

The Jaeger Program's defunding wasn't the first time politics impeded progress. At the program's start, there hadn't been enough funding to find proper test subjects.

"May as well hook me in and see if your theory works," Stacker had told doctors Jasper Schoenfeld and Caitlin Lightcap. And it had.

But the neural strain had been just a taste of what was to come.

May 15, 2016. For three hours, Stacker piloted Coyote Tango solo after Tamsin Sevier blacked out. He'd walked away from the fight with circuitry burns running up and down his left arm and brain damage that would keep him out of a Conn-Pod for the rest of his life.

Which, as it turned out, would be only eight and a half years.

 

_**A constellation of tears on your lashes / Burn everything you love then burn the ashes / In the end everything collides / My childhood spat back the monster that you see** _

Stacker had worn the pain of a father's loss like a blanket as a kid. But Mako Mori wouldn't have to suffer like he did.  
Like him, she'd yearned for vengeance, to kill what had taken her parents from her. But unlike him, she wouldn't need matches to destroy what threatened the rest of her family.

All Stacker had to do was clear a path. Set one more fire so his family could know peace.

 

_**So light em up up up, light em up up up, / Light em up up up, I'm on fire** _

The Conn-Pod was ablaze with warning lights. A siren pierced his ears. Mako's farewell echoed in his mind. Taking one last deep breath, like he had as a kid before striking that first match, Stacker Pentecost and his co-pilot clicked the trigger.

And then...

Ignition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Pacific Rim novelization has a whole dossier on Stacker Pentecost, and it's full of gems. Specifically that Stacker burned down a nightclub (at age 12!) after his father was killed by the owner.
> 
> Since the dossier is only a page and a half long, I took a lot of creative liberties:
> 
> \- Fixed a continuity error (Stacker was born in December 1985, so he wouldn't have been 12 if his father had been killed in 1995) by placing the attack in 1995, his father's death in 1996, and the nightclub fire in 1998
> 
> \- Made Luna Pentecost four years Stacker's junior (she has no canon birthdate)
> 
> \- Decided Viviane was a beautiful singer who loved performing but found herself stuck at a poorly managed club
> 
> \- Decided Obadel would do anything for his family, even if it meant breaking the law to support them
> 
> \- Gave Obadel a noble reason to attack the nightclub owner: He threatened to keep all of Viviane's pay from the previous two weeks since she was threatening to quit; the owner also made an off-hand remark about her children starving, which set Viviane (and therefore Obadel) off
> 
> I also pulled some of Stacker's backstory from the "Tales from Year Zero" graphic novel.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
